A Sunday Times Times Literary Supplement and The Times Book of the YearRobert Darnton is one of the worlds greatest historians and this is an exceptional book a huge social and cultural portrait of Paris in the buildup to the French Revolution Dominic Sandbrook Sunday Times Books of the Year When a Parisian crowd stormed the Bastille in July 1789 it triggered an event of global consequence the overthrow of the monarchy and the birth of a new society. Most historians account for the French Revolution by viewing it as the outcome of underlying conditions such as a faltering economy class conflict or Enlightenment ideology. Without denying any of these Robert Darnton offers a different explanation what Parisians themselves those at the centre of the Revolution thought was happening at the time and how it guided their actions.To understand the rise of what he calls the revolutionary temper Darnton draws on a lifetimes study of pamphlets books underground newsletters songs and public performances exploring Paris as an information society not unlike our own. Its news circuits were centred in cafes and marketplaces on park benches and under the PalaisRoyals Tree of Cracow a favourite gatheringplace for gossips. He shows how the events of forty years from disastrous treaties official corruption and royal scandal to thrilling hotair balloon ascents and a new conception of the nation all entered the collective consciousness of ordinary Parisians. As news and opinion travelled across this profoundly unequal society public trust in royal authority eroded its legitimacy was undermined and the social order unravelled.Much of Robert Darntons work has explained the hidden dynamics of history never more so than in this exceptional book. It is a riveting narrative but it adds a new dimension the perceptions of contemporary Parisians which allows us to see these momentous decades afresh.